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Thursday, 9 July 2015

Bumbling Around Moscow

I am alone in a square, surrounded by people. I am crouched
over a rucksack connecting an ignition device to an explosive cell that could
have an undetermined lethal effect on detonation.

At one end of this long open space is a dark red turreted
pile of a building that ought to be decorated with snow a foot thick on its
near vertical roofs, and at the other end is a building constructed with
brashly coloured children’s building blocks stolen from a Victorian nursery.
Along one long side of the square are massive crenulated walls punctuated with
huge towers that speak of proud and uncompromising imperialism, and along the
other a building with a façade that is more blousy than seventeenth century
Paris. There is a definite, if understated military presence in the place.

". . . . a dark red turreted pile of a building that

ought to be decorated with snow a foot thick"

- The State Historical Museum

The cobbles are small, charcoal grey, smooth and homely.
They are warm and soft to the touch and have the feel of roadside parking areas
in English country towns about them. They are painted with white and yellow
longitudinal lines that far from delineating parking spaces are there to guide
troops, motorised and rocket propelled armour that are brazenly paraded to the
world every May Day.

So there I am about to arm a small nuclear device, in the middle of Red Square in Moscow, which together with Tiananmen and Trafalgar, must be one of the most iconic squares in the world.

Well actually I’m in the fumbling process of charging my
cell phone by connecting a foot long 3 cm diameter battery tube to it. The last
message I had tried to send from the ailing instrument had remained sullenly in
the “out-box” and the screen was fast losing its cheerful lustre. There is nothing more despairing and lonely
than watching your e-lifebelt disintegrating before your very eyes - and
believe me Moscow is a place that you can feel alone in very easily. My sole
connection with the outside world was a limitless travel metro card and the
fast fading cell phone umbilical. Clearly a re-charge was vital.

Half way through this deeply suspicious process I realised
how deeply suspicious I looked; single unshaven man with furtive worried
expression dressed in shabby, foreign clothing, bent over rucksack, in
possession of a long thin metallic tube, USB cable and elderly cell phone; in
the middle of a capital city of a country that may be controversially at war
with a neighbouring state (although they deny this) and that is being viewed
with deepening suspicion and unease by its western allies, and with fear by
it’s traditional enemies.

Thrusting the now connected bomb components into the
rucksack I sidled towards the edge of the square by the facade of the GUM store
and furtively looked at the newly energised and cheerful face of the cell phone
nestled in the dark of the rucksack. The previous barely legible messages from an
hour or so before between me and my companion from whom I’d become separated
sprung to life.

I could now join the rest of the world, and triumphantly
messaged “I've also found Red Square”, and filled with awe at this amazing
place and washed with relief at having avoided arrest for subversive behaviour
reluctantly set off on the quest to find a metro line that just might lead back
to our hotel.